TX-28 · House
election-day forecast · ground-up model · as of 2026-10-02
The district, in brief
Texas's 28th is a new district for 2026, based in the Laredo area and stretching south to McAllen in the Rio Grande Valley and north to Atascosa County near San Antonio. On these lines the text records Donald Trump at 54.8% in 2024 and Ted Cruz winning a plurality of 48.8% by 228 votes, after Biden had taken 54.3% in 2020 and Clinton 66.4% in 2016.
The incumbent is Democrat Henry Cuellar, re-elected with 52.8% in 2024, whose primary opponents were eliminated. The Republican nominee is Tano Tijerina, the Webb County judge since 2014, who won his primary with 74.3% over Eileen Day. Three other Republicans, among them former U.S. representative Mayra Flores and the 2024 nominee Jay Furman, withdrew to run elsewhere. Tijerina carries endorsements from Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Speaker Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise and Tom Emmer; Cuellar is endorsed by AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel. As of June 30, 2026 Cuellar had raised $2,231,952 with $1,129,604 on hand, Tijerina $1,399,881 with $768,188 on hand.
Every rater listed calls the seat D: Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), the Cook Political Report (December 9, 2025), Inside Elections (August 28, 2025), Sabato's Crystal Ball (December 10, 2025) and Silver Bulletin (August 20, 2026). Two district polls are recorded: Public Policy Research/Texas Southern University (August 18–22, 2026) had Cuellar 45%, Tijerina 34%; Pulse Science Decision, a Republican firm (June 21–23, 2026), had Tijerina 46%, Cuellar 38%.
A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.
The facts, each beside its sentence
The incumbent is Democrat Henry Cuellar, who was re-elected with 52.8% of the vote in 2024.
The incumbent is Democrat Henry Cuellar
Henry Cuellar, incumbent U.S. representative
Tano Tijerina, Webb County judge
Henry Cuellar, incumbent U.S. representative
Tano Tijerina, Webb County judgeCounty executive (2014–present)
Donald Trump won 54.8% of the vote in this overwhelmingly Hispanic district in 2024, which also saw Ted Cruz win a plurality of 48.8% (and a vote margin of only 228 votes) that same year; the district previously gave Democrats Joe Biden 54.3% in 2020 and Hillary Clinton 66.4% in 2016.
who was re-elected with 52.8% of the vote in 2024
The new 28th district is based in the Laredo area and stretches south to McAllen in the Rio Grande Valley and north to Atascosa County in the San Antonio area.
candidate: Tano Tijerina votes: 12,514 percentage: 74.3
Decision Desk HQ D July 14, 2026 The Cook Political Report D December 9, 2025
Henry Cuellar (D) $2,231,952 $1,150,307 $1,129,604
Public Policy Research/Texas Southern University August 18–22, 2026 600 (LV)
Mike Johnson, speaker of the House (2023–present) from LA-04 (2017–present)
* AIPAC * Democratic Majority for Israel
Jay Furman, physician and nominee for this district in 2024 (ran in the 35th district)
John E Foddrill, candidate for San Antonio City Council in 2015 (nonpartisan)
Not in the source: The text gives no result for Cuellar's Democratic primary, only that his opponents were eliminated.; No general-election ratings finer than 'D' are given (no Lean/Likely/Safe).; The two polls are on Wikipedia but not in this project's poll corpus, which records no House district polls.
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as efe72be7e14a; written by claude-fable-5-1 (session) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.
Who holds the seat now
Henry Cuellar (Democrat), in this chamber since 2005, 11 terms. Committees: House Committee on Appropriations.
From the congress-legislators dataset (CC0), archived as ae8cb9477c48. For a Senate race this lists both of the state's senators; the one whose term ends in the election year holds the seat on the ballot. For a House district redrawn for 2026 it is the member elected under the old lines with this number, who may be running elsewhere; the dossier above names who is running here.
How it has voted for president
| Two-party margin | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| President | D+37.8 | D+10.4 | R+10.1 |
A shift of 48.0 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns placed on the current lines by 2020 block population; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.
Who are the voters?
| Group (adults 25+) | Share of adults | Turnout 2020 / midterm | Share of a midterm electorate | Est. Democratic share, 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| White, no degree | 7% | 62% / 44% | 10% | 10% |
| White, degree | 3% | 84% / 68% | 6% | 58% |
| Black | 1% | 56% / 39% | 1% | 92% |
| Hispanic | 89% | 38% / 26% | 81% | 59% |
| Asian | 1% | 39% / 28% | 1% | 63% |
| Other / multiracial | 1% | 55% / 40% | 1% | 57% |
Of about 444,676 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 54.8% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 54.7% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.1 points toward Republicans. Group shares are estimated from how results vary across the state's census tracts (ecological inference, anchored to Pew's 2020 validated-voter figures) and calibrated to this district's actual 2020 vote; turnout is the Census survey's state rate by race and national rate by education, whose state samples carry margins of several points.
Not answered here: how each group will vote in 2026. These are 2020 preferences; this profile is description, not yet an input to the forecast.
The money
| Candidate | Raised | Cash on hand | PAC share | Self-funded | Outside $ for | Outside $ against |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cuellar, Henry R. (DEM) incumbent | $2,231,952 | $1,129,604 | 30% | 14% | $10,387 | $0 |
| Tijerina, Tano (REP) challenger | $1,399,881 | $768,188 | 17% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Villarreal, Ricardo (DEM) challenger · not on our roster | $67,967 | $21,529 | 0% | 87% | $0 | $0 |
| Esparza, Juan (REP) challenger · not on our roster | $32,404 | $0 | 0% | 94% | $0 | $0 |
FEC bulk candidate summaries through June 30, 2026; $10,387 of independent expenditures for or against these candidates this cycle (FEC Schedule E, types 24E and 24A), which is the parties' and outside groups' own revealed view of whether this seat is in play.
The district in numbers
| Measure | District | Nation | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+ | 18.7% | 34.9% | -16.3 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic | 7.4% | 58.2% | -50.8 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic | 0.5% | 12.0% | -11.5 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino | 90.7% | 19.0% | +71.7 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic | 0.6% | 5.8% | -5.1 pts |
| Foreign-born | 25.1% | 13.9% | +11.2 pts |
| Median age | 31.8 | 39.2 | -7.4 |
| Median household income | $56,157 | $84,362 | $-28,205 |
| Median home value | $146,421 | $379,737 | $-233,316 |
| Owner-occupied homes | 67.5% | 65.1% | +2.4 pts |
| Unemployment, July 2026 (BLS county data) | 6.2% | 4.4% | +1.8 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months | -0.1 pts | — | — |
| Change since the last election (24 months) | +0.2 pts | — | — |
| Unemployment (ACS) | 6.8% | 5.2% | +1.6 pts |
| Federal government workers | 2.8% | 2.6% | +0.2 pts |
| Work from home | 7.2% | 13.5% | -6.2 pts |
| Households on SNAP | 26.8% | 11.8% | +15.1 pts |
| Households with Social Security income | 28.3% | 31.2% | -2.9 pts |
| Households with public assistance income | 1.9% | 2.7% | -0.7 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year | 0.6% | 2.3% | -1.7 pts |
| Gini index | 0.40 | 0.44 | -0.04 |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $40,242 | $73,248 | $-33,006 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 25.6% | 32.0% | -6.3 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 29.6% | 19.6% | +10.0 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 5.0% | 5.8% | -0.8 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 5.8% | 4.5% | +1.3 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 8.7% | 4.0% | +4.7 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 2.1% | 0.6% | +1.5 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 1.5% | 0.4% | +1.1 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 1.1% | 0.9% | +0.2 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 2.0% | 1.3% | +0.7 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.4% | 0.9% | -0.5 pts |
ACS 5-year 2023, assembled from census tracts by the 2020 population of their blocks inside the current lines, because the Bureau has not tabulated these lines; medians are population-weighted means of tract medians. Unemployment is the BLS county series placed on the district by block population, not seasonally adjusted, so changes are same-month comparisons. Income, transfers and jobs are BEA county accounts placed the same way, compared with the average district. Every other figure is a named column of a named table in the Bureau's summary file, archived before it was read. This is what a reader knows about a district before looking at a poll; the model does not yet use it, and whether it should is a registered question.
Who is favoured, and by how much?
The 90% interval runs from -3.8 to +26.9 points, D-R. It is wide because this district has never been polled.
What is this built on?
A model trained on every contested House race 2012-2024 predicts this district's lean from its own record: presidential and House results on the current lines, incumbency, both candidates' prior offices, outside and party money before 1 October, demographics and public-assistance shares from the Census release before the election, local unemployment and income, and religious tradition. The national margin comes from presidential approval, the economy, the midterm penalty and the generic ballot corrected for its measured lean. Draws share national and state errors, so the seat total and this district come from the same simulation.
Not answered here: district polls, which are not yet folded in.
Why does the model say this?
Each figure is how far this district's predicted lean moves when that one feature is set to the typical value across 2026 districts, everything else held: PAC money balance: 11.3 pts toward the Democrat; experience gap (+3 levels, D minus R): 4.0 pts toward the Democrat; Democrat's experience (incumbent): 3.8 pts toward the Democrat; moved from other state share (0.6%): 1.9 pts toward the Republican; 2024 House lean: 1.7 pts toward the Democrat.
How sure is it, and of what?
Total sd 9.27 points, made of the seat's own volatility 91%, correlated polling error 9%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.
Not answered here: a nowcast. 'If ballots were cast today' needs something that observes today, and for a House district nothing does. Publishing the election-day figure under both labels would make one forecast look like two.
How was this number made?
Run 00a09d4b-7980-4ec5-ada0-077968a87242, house_district_prior/0.2.0, as of 2026-10-02. Promoted by a pre-registered gate: on 2016-2022 its Brier score was 0.036 against 0.049 for the previous method, and on a single 2024 run 0.023 against 0.032 (experiments/district_gate_result.md, with an independent review).